How to Get Crayon Out of Clothes

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Last Updated on October 4, 2026 by Umar Farooq

Scrape off what you can, work liquid dish soap into the mark dry, leave it a few minutes, then rub the fabric against itself under warm running water and wash on the heaviest soil setting at the hottest temperature the care label allows. Line dry and inspect. Crayola publishes one method for fresh, heat-set and melted crayon alike — the dryer does not change what you do, only how many passes it takes.

The search that brings most people here is not a crayon on a sleeve. It is the one that starts at the dryer door, with a load that went in clean.

Wax carries the pigment in, and only one of them melts out

A crayon is two materials pretending to be one. Crayola’s manufacturing page names them: “paraffin wax and color pigment”, the wax melted and blended with powdered pigment, then poured into moulds where it sets in four to seven minutes (crayon manufacturing process and basic ingredients). The two halves behave completely differently in a shirt.

The wax responds to warmth and to a surfactant: it softens, releases and washes away, which is why dish detergent and hot water do most of the work. The pigment was never dissolved in anything. It was suspended in the wax, the wax carried it into the weave, and once the wax goes the colour sits in the fibre on its own — which is why the greasy feel disappears on the first wash while a faint purple ghost stays for two more.

That is also why the dryer case looks worse than it is. Heat turns a forgotten crayon into a liquid that distributes itself over everything in the drum: more garments marked, each one less deeply. Crayola’s stain page covers all three states under one procedure — it is headed “Regular Crayons on Fabric (Fresh, Heat-Set, Melted)” — which is a quietly useful thing for a manufacturer to admit.

How to get crayon out of clothes, fresh or melted in the dryer

Do one garment first before committing the whole load, because the number of passes varies with colour and fabric. Everything below is Crayola’s published sequence, with the ice step Maytag adds for anything still soft.

  1. If the wax is warm, chill it. Maytag is firm: “Never attempt to remove a hot, melted crayon stain, as it may smear” (how to get crayon out of clothes in 5 steps). Ice in a bag until it hardens.
  2. Scrape off the solid. Dull knife or credit card edge, outward from the middle.
  3. Dish soap, dry. Work liquid dish detergent in with a thumb or an old toothbrush. No water yet — you want the surfactant on the wax, not diluted beside it.
  4. Leave it, then rub under warm water. Crayola: “Let stand a few minutes, rub fabric under warm water to remove the stain.”
  5. Wash hot, heavy soil. Crayola again: “Machine wash using the heavy soil setting and the hottest water the fabric will allow with OxiClean or Clorox 2.” The oxygen bleach is aimed at the pigment, not the wax.
  6. Line dry and look at it in daylight, then repeat from step three if a shadow remains.

Rinse the dish soap out properly first. A sink’s worth of it in a drum makes more foam than a drain pump can move.

Why a crayon mark clears in two stages and an iron helps only the first A crayon is paraffin wax blended with solid colour pigment. When it marks fabric, the wax carries the pigment into the weave, and the two halves then behave differently. The wax half softens with warmth and is lifted by a surfactant such as dish detergent, so it leaves on the first treatment and the greasy feel disappears. The pigment half was never dissolved; it is a solid particle left sitting in the fibre once the wax has gone, and it responds to oxygen bleach and repeated washing rather than to heat. Applying a warm iron through paper towel removes wax efficiently, which is why the method works on plain candle wax, but on a crayon the same heat mobilises and spreads the pigment the wax leaves behind. That is the reason the manufacturer’s own fabric procedure contains no ironing step for any crayon state, fresh, heat-set or melted. One stick, two materials, two different removals. Paraffin wax Softens with warmth. Lifted by a surfactant — dish detergent. Gone on pass one. The greasy feel disappears with it. This is the half an iron can move. Colour pigment Never dissolved. A solid particle the wax carried into the weave. Needs oxygen bleach and repeat washes, not heat. An iron spreads this half wider. Candle wax is only the left-hand box, which is why ironing works there and misleads here. Crayola’s fabric method covers fresh, heat-set and melted crayon identically, and uses no iron at all.

The warm-iron trick works on candles and fails on crayons

Place the mark face down on paper towel, run a warm iron over the back, and the wax wicks into the towel. Excellent technique, right answer for candle wax, and Maytag recommends a version of it for crayon too.

I would not. A candle is wax; a crayon is wax plus a pigment load heavy enough to colour a page. The iron mobilises the wax, and the pigment travels with it — outward, over a wider area, with heat now on a colourant that was confined to a small mark. The evidence is in what the other sources leave out. Crayola’s fabric procedure has no ironing step at any crayon state, and the University of Georgia Extension’s apparel method has none either: lay the fabric “face down on a pad of white paper towels”, treat with a pre-wash spotter, “wait 2 minutes, then turn the fabric over and repeat the process”, then dish detergent and a hot wash with sodium perborate bleach (remove stains from crayon). Paper towel and a solvent, not paper towel and heat.

The crayon is in your drum now, and two sources differ on the fix

If a crayon went through a dryer, the drum is coated and the next load will come out marked. Both sources that cover this agree on the first move — wipe the drum, then run rags through it — then split on one detail.

Crayola says to wipe with paper towels, use a melamine foam eraser per its directions, and then “clean, dry rags can be placed in the dryer and run through a cycle to remove any remaining stains” (how do I remove melted crayons from my clothes dryer). The extension service says to spray the drums with a pre-wash spot remover, wipe with a soft cloth, run a full hot cycle of rags through the washer, and then — its wording — “for the dryer, run the wet rags through the drying cycle.” Crayola scours, UGA steams. Wash the rags first and put those same damp rags in the dryer, and you have followed both.

UGA also publishes the line nobody else will say out loud. For a whole contaminated load it recommends you “dry-clean in a coin-operated dry-cleaning machine or take to a commercial dry-cleaner” — worth weighing before your third sink of dish soap (how to clean a dryer).

FAQ

Can you get crayon out of clothes after they have been through the dryer?

Usually completely. Melted crayon spreads over more items but soaks into each one less, so the procedure is identical to a fresh mark and simply needs more passes. What makes it permanent is a second trip through the dryer before the colour has gone.

Does WD-40 work on crayon stains?

It does break down the wax. It is also a petroleum solvent, so the garment must be rinsed and aired thoroughly before it goes near a machine. Dish detergent does the same job without that step.

Should I use hot or cold water on crayon?

Hot, as hot as the care label permits, which makes crayon unusual. Heat sets most stains; wax is the exception, because warmth is what releases it. The pigment left behind answers to oxygen bleach and repetition, not to temperature.

Will one crayon really mark a whole load?

Comfortably. A crayon is a few grams of wax, and a hot drum turns all of it into a liquid tumbled across every surface for forty minutes. The damage spreads thin, which is the good news.

Is the colour or the grease harder to remove?

The colour. The waxy feel goes on the first treatment and convinces people the garment is clean while it is still wet.

Two passes at the sink, then line dry and look

This stain has a reputation it does not deserve, and the reason is that the first pass always half-works. The grease lifts, the fabric feels right, and the pigment stays invisible until the water leaves.

Treat it twice before judging it, keep it out of the dryer until daylight says it is clean, and clear the drum before the next load. For a stain this reversible, the only real way to lose a garment is to hurry (stain removal chart).

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